Updates and Thoughts

It's been some time since I've had time to update blogs.

Today I've been thinking about some of the common terms in use and our lifestyle as vandwellers.

What we do isn't new or revolutionary. A lot of the ways i live in my van go back only two generations ago.

My family had outhouse, running water is reasonably new, and electricity in house not that old either. Someone made a comment online and it reminds me that many people...Amish and Mennonite...still don't use electric in the house.

In recent old days, people had a stand with a pitcher and a bowl on it for cleanliness. They still do. You'd wash up in privacy of your room. Saturday the big tub would be put in the kitchen, it was filled by hand, and emptied into the garden or flowers. Waste not want not.

So...why when converting a van do you need running water, showers, hard wired electric.

We overthink things making our van into a pale imitation of a house.

Why not look back and learn simpler less consumerism ways?

What really are needs...what are wants? I enjoy a few simple decadent luxuries. The majority of my life...is very simple, freeing me from things and allowing me to focus on friends and people and nature and of course my dog.

I don't need a large kitchen, with running water and many appliances to cook good meals. I've turned out a fancy Sunday dinner in a sand covered desert near the Mexican border. No running water, no electric, just me and my propane stove. I've cooked same type of meal in the pouring rain in Michigan in the Manistee National Forest.

I don't own a tv. I do enjoy shows via streaming video and saved on my 1T external hard drive.

I'm not homeless making do. I'm truly a nomad, living as many peoples have for countless untold years. My war pony is gasoline driven. My tipi has wheels. But it's the same as generations back where people roamed within an area living much more gently on Mother Earth.

Many pay lip service to this life style or half step their way though it. I raise my pot of coffee made the Old way in a stove top percolator on an open fire to those who truly understand and live this life.